Technology and Teaching Writing

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Is it a given that technology enhances the acts of writing, as it does the arts and sciences of film-making, design, engineering, data collection and analyses, and so forth? What about the teaching and learning of writing?

In a flurry of recent exchanges (subject “Writing horse-shoe-of-horse-heading-east Technology”) on the Writing Program Administration (WPA) listserv, scholars in writing studies have argued these points in some theoretical and practical depth. Maja Wilson, from the University of Maine, sums up the argument nicely: "Steve [Krause, of Eastern Michigan University], and others were arguing that to teach writing, you need to teach the tools available now and not teach or allow the tools on their way out (pen, pencil), because if you aren't teaching the tools, you aren't teaching writing. Rich [Haswell, professor emeritus from Texas A&M University], and others argued that, while teaching the use of all those tools can be a good thing, it isn't necessary to teach writing: writing itself transcends the particular tools, so while teaching the tools can be involved in teaching writing, it isn't necessarily the same thing."

I was recently named Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven’s 2011 Outstanding Technological Teacher. While it is a great honor to receive this recognition of my work in teaching with technology, I must admit I was a late bloomer when it comes to utilizing technology in my teaching. Like many of my colleagues who teach writing, I ignored and resisted technology because I simply did not see it as substantially adding any extra learning value for students or for myself. I thought much more like the scholars in the Haswell camp.

But around 2003, colleagues at my former institution, the University of Washington, and I began to ask some serious questions about the value of teaching with technology for student learning. Since then I have been an ardent student — questioning, researching, and experimenting with the value of teaching with technology in my courses and sharing what I’ve learned with colleagues along the way. While the PR discourse surrounding the award has understandably presented the somewhat uncomplicated portrait of a finished exemplary techie teacher product, I’d like to share just a few insights I’ve gathered over the years with fellow Inside Higher Ed readers. I’ll offer some of the shining — as well as not-so-polished — snapshots of a teacher learning tech, in process.

The Ups

While I had used some technology in my writing courses for years, in 2005 I found myself in a position to take advantage of a great opportunity to research, teach and learn with innovative technology. I worked closely with a team of research scientists from the UW Center for Learning and Scholarly Technologies on two studies investigating the effects of transitioning from print to electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in multiple sections of our first-year composition courses. This project is part of the larger Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research (I/NCEPR). You can peruse the impressions — from myself, and from the director of the UW Expository Writing Program, Anis Bawarshi — of our involvement in ePortfolio research here.

In short, our findings suggest: most students take to writing with technology quite well, and those who do not usually benefit from the practice and explicit instruction; instructors and administrators sometimes need just as much help learning about technological choices and options (let alone teaching them) as students; and online writing environments do not magically produce better student writing — or better teaching practices — but can allow for practice with different composing and teaching skills, which can lead to better writing, teaching, and administering depending on the form (for example awareness of audio, visual, and design considerations).

Importantly, this research quickly began to influence and enhance my teaching. I started using ePortfolios in all my writing courses. In every course I use ePortfolios in tandem with specific learning goals/ objectives. Portfolios allow students time to present their best work for the course and opportunities to revisit works in progress in order to critically and rhetorically analyze and revise their own written products and writing process performances. This also allows me, as the instructor, the ability to see each critical and creative move students are making in their attempts to meet the goals of the particular course. I also use the same ePortfolio online platform for my own simple website, including course webpages. That way, I can help students learn the system much more easily via modeling and my own trial and error experiences.

At about this time, I also started teaching in wired computer classrooms. Within about a year I proclaimed myself teaching in the "paperless" writing classroom. I started having students do all their work online: constructing ePortfolios to house and showcase all their work for the course, using online file-sharing spaces to conduct peer review and response on each other’s written work, and collaborating with each other in and out of the classroom with the aid of their computers.

One of the biggest pedagogical effects this approach has had on my teaching is to allow my classroom to become, more than ever, a real artistic writing studio — a place much like an art studio where students work on their writing in small groups and individually, while I circulate the room facilitating and joining in on student discussions of their written works in progress. This creative classroom fluidity is enhanced even further by the laptop-equipped classrooms designed and maintained at Southern Connecticut State University by William Hochman.

Further, I have taught these paperless writing courses with hundreds of students of all preparation levels and cultural backgrounds. For example, in the basic writing courses I have taught both at UW and here at Southern Connecticut, I have encountered many students who are unfamiliar, and sometimes quite uncomfortable, with negotiating any sort of technology. My technology-infused writing curriculum, I believe, offers students a warm welcome and patient learning process for several important writing-technology skills, including formatting texts, saving and sharing files, and designing simple webpages via their ePortfolios. I have watched students with great tech anxiety become much stronger in their ability to work with technology, witnessing the sense of agency and confidence that all students can gain if they experience an atmosphere conducive to collaboration and sharing, and just the right amount of challenging tasks. One such student, Fallon, started off with all the signs of this anxiety, but she ended up taking enthusiastically to writing with technology. We welcome you to visit her exemplary (though not perfect) ePortfolio with her full permission.

The enthusiastic embracing of technology, including the idea of the paperless classroom, may strike some readers as quite a lot to consider. The main piece of advice I would give to fellow teachers interested in implementing tech into their teaching is be patient. Murphy’s Law applies to learning and teaching with technology like nothing else. So take it slow and easy. Rather than diving full-tilt into every tech application available, decide on one or two things at a time that you can work into your pedagogy. Always think about what any given piece of technology might add to the quality of your teaching (for example accommodating diverse student learning styles via audio/ visual elements). And always try to develop backup plans in case a given technology does not work.

Talk for just a while with experienced techie-teachers and you will quickly hear all sorts of admonishing stories involving difficulties with slow or inconsistent routing systems, students with varying levels of technological proficiency and savvy, or with students being distracted by Facebook or other online social networks.

Although above I describe how my laptop-equipped classrooms allow for a studio-like artistic environment, students and I have frequently experienced frustrating moments where our online connections get cut right in the middle of some creative activity like trying to post a document online. This has caused me to coach students on ways to back up their work. Flash drives, for example, become invaluable allies because they provide a good way to move documents back and forth from hard drives to online spaces — just in case we lose a connection.

The issue of different levels of student proficiency with tech is another common problem. I’ve often had students — like Fallon above — who had little practical experience with the intricacies of writing and sharing writing online. But this is where the ubiquitous collaborative pedagogy espoused and practiced by writing teachers everywhere helps. Since so much of what we do in my writing classes involves students helping students — as well as themselves — take more responsibility for each other’s writing processes, this same collaborative frame of mind applies to learning to write and share writing in online environments (see my article in Inside Higher Ed on how my peer review process works).

And the issue of students being distracted by social networks like Facebook is a valid concern for any techie teacher. A recent Inside Higher Edarticle suggests just how distracting the thrall and temptation to visit online social networking environments in classrooms can be for students. But the article also suggests (and I would agree) that a vigilant teacher can stay on top of the problem of the compulsive web-surfer often simply by watching students' eye movements and gestures. By circulating the room frequently, and training ourselves to be aware of the subtle and not-so-subtle eye and hand movements that can belie a Facebook frequenter, we can take steady steps toward keeping students attentive and on task.

Yet one of the more difficult downs to work against involves faculty attitudes toward teaching with technology. One of the things I’ve noticed, at both a huge R1 like UW and a midsize teaching school like Southern Connecticut, is faculty resistance to teaching with technology. I remember, for instance, trying to sell the idea of ePortfolios to a group of writing program administrators and instructors at the UW. I heard every excuse imaginable, including the potential “downs” we discussed above, and others like "I would prefer not to do online commenting because I have always written my comments out by hand. It is much more convenient for me to bring hard copies with me wherever I might go." (Yep, even in the land of Microsoft and Bill Gates.)

For me, it has often been more difficult to persuade colleagues to buy into experimenting with techie teaching and learning than students. And given the fact that I think of myself as coming late to tech-teaching, I really do understand where these sorts of skeptical attitudes come from. But I have also witnessed just how much tech has to offer our students in terms of tools for enhanced learning. The bottom line is that tech is not going away any time soon. For teachers of college writing — at least in first-year composition — the fairly recent edition of a fifth category to the WPA [learning] Outcomes Statement "Composing in Electronic Environments" makes the links between writing, learning, and technology a crucial pedagogical priority.

Still, I believe we should do what we can as teachers of writing to keep the ups and downs of teaching and learning with tech in critical tension. Let’s try to be careful not to get too high or too low on tech, and with luck our colleagues and students will appreciate our sober points of view.